Mrs. Wainwright had been a good deal
disturbed about there being no room for Grace when she came back to
Highland, and one would have been fitted up had there been an extra cent
in the family exchequer. Grace didn't mind, or if she did, she made
light of her sacrifice; but her sisters felt that they ought to help her
to privacy.
Eva and Miriam came over to the Manse to consult us in the early days.
I suggested screens.
"You can do almost anything with screens and portieres," I said. "One
of the loveliest rooms I ever saw in my life is in a cottage in the
Catskills, where one large room is separated into drawing-room, library,
and dining-room, and sometimes into a spare chamber, as well, by the
judicious use of screens."
"Could we buy them at any price we could pay?" said Miriam.
"Buy them, child? What are you talking about? You can make them. You
need only two or three clothes-horses for frames, some chintz, or even
wall-paper or calico, a few small tacks, a little braid, a hammer and
patience."
After Grace was fairly launched on her career as teacher, mother
suggested one day that the tower-room at Wishing-Brae could be
transformed into a maiden's bower without the spending of much money,
and that it would make an ideal girl's room, "just the nest for Grace,
to fold her wings in and sing her songs--a nest with an outlook over the
tree-tops and a field of stars above it."
"Mother dear, you are too poetical and romantic for anything, but I
believe," said Amy, "that it could be done, and if it could it ought.
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